From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture

From Mouse to Mermaid The Politics of Film Gender and Culture From Mouse to Mermaid an interdisciplinary collection of original essays is the first comprehensive critical treatment of Disney cinema Addressing children s classics as well as the Disney affiliat

Title: From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture

Author: Elizabeth Bell Laura Sells Lynda Haas

ISBN: 9780253209788

Page: 495

Format: Paperback

From Mouse to Mermaid, an interdisciplinary collection of original essays, is the first comprehensive, critical treatment of Disney cinema Addressing children s classics as well as the Disney affiliates recent attempts to capture adult audiences, the contributors respond to the Disney film legacy from feminist, marxist, poststructuralist, and cultural studies perspeFrom Mouse to Mermaid, an interdisciplinary collection of original essays, is the first comprehensive, critical treatment of Disney cinema Addressing children s classics as well as the Disney affiliates recent attempts to capture adult audiences, the contributors respond to the Disney film legacy from feminist, marxist, poststructuralist, and cultural studies perspectives The volume contemplates Disney s duality as an American icon and as an industry of cultural production, created in and through fifty years of filmmaking The contributors treat a range of topics at issue in contemporary cultural studies the performance of gender, race, and class the engendered images of science, nature, technology, family, and business The compilation of voices in From Mouse to Mermaid creates a persuasive cultural critique of Disney s ideology.The contributors are Bryan Attebery, Elizabeth Bell, Claudia Card, Chris Cuomo, Ramona Fernandez, Henry A Giroux, Robert Haas, Lynda Haas, Susan Jeffords, N Soyini Madison, Susan Miller, Patrick Murphy, David Payne, Greg Rode, Laura Sells, and Jack Zipes.

One thought on “From Mouse to Mermaid: The Politics of Film, Gender, and Culture”

Excerpt from my full review at seattlebooks.tumblr:This is an essential book for any Disney fan.Back in the mid-1990s, when The Little Mermaid and Aladdin were fresh on everyone’s minds, University of South Florida professor Elizabeth Bell collaborated with a host of scholars and writers to dissect the Wonderful World of Disney. In 16 essays, they dug into the historically inaccurate films of EPCOT, the racist undertones in Song of the South and The Jungle Book, the inherent misogyny of Pretty [...]

3.5 stars. As with most books compiled of writing from different authors, I found them to be of variable interest and readability. I got it from the library assuming that it was meant for the educated layperson, but I have to wonder exactly who the target audience is, at least for some of the essays, as the following example of academese (maybe understandable to the specialist, but gobbledygook at its finest to the rest of us), almost stopped me in my tracks not that far from the beginning."Cent [...]

Some interesting essays on Disney films (including several live-action movies distributed by Disney, such as Pretty Woman). They're definitely of the "Disney is a homogeneous, deeply problematic empire" type, so skip if you'd rather let your nostalgic favorites be or if you don't like sociological analyses (I'm a fan, but I love this type of thing). Knocked down a star for a few utterly ridiculous essays--when an essay states as a fact that the interaction between Gepetto's cat and fish is an in [...]

Having read a lot of works by Zipes since, I think this is perhaps the best of his work. As for the other chapters, whilst some contained ideas I haven't heard of before, I suffered through a lot of it due to inaccurate detailing, and the fact that it was apparant the author had not actually watched the film in question recently - some of the arguments presented could easily be contradicted when you realised that what they are describing did not actually happen.

I read some of these essays for a class, and they were excellent. In particular, "Somatexts at the Disney Workshop" and the essay on The Little Mermaid are worth a read. I was less interested in the live movies distributed by Disney, but not really associated with the Disney brand/image, so those parts basically amounted to padding for me.

I knew there was a reason the Disney princess movies bothered meA really nice feminist reading of Disney films. You can never watch and of the princess movies again without asking yourself, "Isn't there more to life than marrying the handsome prince?"